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COCHRAN'S COMMENT I
WAR AND THE WORKERS. If
this country goes to war the atten
tion of the nation will have to be
concentrated on the living conditions
of the working class something a
busy nation won't do in times of
peace. The war has checked immi
gration. It is no lpnger possible for
employers to bear the labor market
by oversupply. American workers no
longer have such keen competition
with cheap imported labor. The
more men leaving the mills, shops,
factories and stores to build up the
army and navy, the less competition
there will be in the ranks of labor.
Wages for those who work will have
to go higher. The government will
have to regulate food prices and dis
tribution. It may have to take over
the railroads and operate them. La
bor will be in stronger position o
make demands, as it was in England
after the war started. Many of these
demands will have to be met. A coun
try that needs its workers for work
as well as war must protect their in
terests and help them to protect
themselves. If we're going to use
labor we must also use capital. It's
as important to draft capital as to
draft gun-fodder. So let the rich pay
war expenses and give labor a fairer
share of the profits of industry. We
must protect not only the wives and
children of the workers who join the
army and navy, but the wives and
children of those who carry on the
work while their brothers go to war.
We're fortunate in one matter
the country has a president who isn't
owned by Wall street. He is free to
protect the interest of men, women
and children. He is free to use to
the limit his power to regulafe food
hogs, munition makers and specula
tors. When you get down to brass
tacks the workers do the fighting
and theirs should be the reward.
We've got to protect the health of
fathers and mothers, sons and
daughters. They've got to have 1
good food and enough of it. If we
want healthy gun-fodder we've got
to have strong and healthy parents.
Here's where real preparedness be-'
gins.
If we're going to war we've got to
fight We can't fight with underfed
men and cripples. That means we've
got to develop robust manhood.
Peace hasn't taught us that our
greatest asset and resource is
healthy manhood and womanhood.
If war will teach us what peace did
not, then war may be worth while,
despite all its horrors. For peace has
its horrors, too. For that matter
there has been no peace. We have
been in the midst of an industrial
war for years and its list of maimed
and murdered is quite as long as a
similar list in war. Every jail, work
house, penitentiary, insane asylum or
other institution for the care of men
tal and physical defectives cries
aloud of the horrors of this' war of
peace. And the vice and crime of
peace are quite as horrible as the
vice and crime of war. Whatever dif
ference there is in dying for one's
country on the battlefield and dying
of slow starvation in a city's slums
is all in favor of war. There's noth
ing glorious about a national peace
that means white slavery for the
great mass of people. The white
slavery of today is every bit as-odious
as the black slavery that brought
on the civil war. And if war will free
the white slaves of today and peace
will not, then I have no fear of war.
If war will do what Christianity, civ
ilization, culture, capitalism, social
ism, trades .unionism and peace have
failed to do, then I can look it in the
eye without dread. If war means a
larger measure of justice for the
workers it .will not be an unmixed
eviL And I say this as one who has
prayed for peace and fought for jus
tice and, it seems, almost in vaiH.
I don't know that war is the moral
tonic our hypocritical civilization
needs, But if we are pushed into it
then I hope war will bring the social
'
-a-JteAJ